Is Film History Already Being Made on Mars?
When NASA’s Perseverance rover landed on Mars last week, your first thought probably wasn’t about film history.
Yet its landing marks the first time a film was shot of the red planet, accompanied by audio captured from its atmosphere.
Past videos captured on Mars (from NASA’s Curiosity above) were actually just images turned into GIFs.
Science buffs may remember past visuals from previous spacecrafts, these were actually just black and white images stitched together in GIF form.
By contrast, Perseverance has high-definition video capabilities, rocking 23 cameras that can zoom and record in color. That’s almost as many cameras as 8 of the newest iPhones!
The result is a clear video depicting Perseverance’s descent onto Mars, which NASA Administrator Steve Jurczyk calls “some of the most iconic visuals in space exploration history.”
Like most early films shot on Earth, the video footage is silent, and not synced to any sound.
Instead, a commercial microphone attached to the rover separately recorded a few seconds of Martian breeze—the first ever audio recording of the planet.
Also like the earliest films shot on Earth, this new footage from Mars is more documentary than fiction, depicting (martian) life unfolding in front of the camera.
Perhaps the first “over-the-rover” shot from Mars, captured by Perseverance.
Students who have studied filmmaking with us will be able to identify the types of shots captured by Perseverance, such as first-person POV (point-of-view) shots from the perspective of the rover.
Another angle shot from behind the rover, allowing itself to be included in the frame, resembles over-the-shoulder shots used in movies, though “over-the-rover” may be more appropriate here.
It may still be sometime before filmmaking crews can create a narrative film on Mars, but it’s undeniable that film history is already being made on the planet.
This makes us wonder… will Mars be the new frontier of moviemaking in the future?